I have been amazed at how many of us come forth from a good 5th step and immediately say, “I sure have a lot to work on.” We climb to the sixth step and realize that we have nothing to work on, unless our Higher Power indicates such to us. The 6th step is counter-intuitive. I am eager to get working on my defects but my Higher Power is telling me to hold my horses until He gives the command, pointing out which shortcoming He wants to lengthen and what he wants from me.
At the same time, I agree with the clergy person quoted in 12 & 12 who states that this is the step that separates the adults from the kids in terms of recovery. I do not graduate with a good step five but neither should I throw myself headlong into a self-improvement project. I just have to be ready and willing for God to work with me, keeping myself “thawed out,” as I like to say, and not placing myself back in the deep freeze of repressed thoughts and feelings and resulting inactivity.
Steps 6 and 7 get only two short paragraphs in the Big Book, yet I have grown more from climbing those steps than from all the rest. God typically points out one short-coming that is my “growing edge.” In that very pointing-out, God usually gives me the courage to change and the grace to do it.
Climb the sixth and seventh steps carefully. You owe it to yourself and to your recovery.
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